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Protecting Data: Windows Vista disk diagnostics. Nathan Obr. Quantifying Disk Failures. Catastrophic disk failures ~200 disks replaced per week at Microsoft in 2003 Top driver of Microsoft support’s hardware-related support calls in both client and server
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Quantifying Disk Failures • Catastrophic disk failures • ~200 disks replaced per week at Microsoft in 2003 • Top driver of Microsoft support’s hardware-related support calls in both client and server • Based on Microsoft figures, disk failures cost many millions of dollars per year in enterprises • Localized failures (bad blocks) • Kernel and user-mode crashes • 1.7% of customer-report Microsoft Online Crash Analysis crashes are due to disk errors • Application hangs during read recovery
Disk Failure Mitigations • Prevention • Hybrid hard disks (mobile systems) • RAID • Catastrophic failure recovery • Data backup • Disk replacement • Localized failure recovery • Repair from redundant copy • Restore from backup
Windows Vista Disk Diagnostics • Purpose: Save user data before catastrophic disk failure • Client SKUs • Self Monitoring And Reporting Technology (S.M.A.R.T.) polling triggers diagnostic • Uses S.M.A.R.T. trip status – no threshold/attribute comparison • Warns user of impending failure and walks them through backup and replacement • Windows Vista backup improvements
Disk Diagnostics Details • Disk class driver polls S.M.A.R.T. status hourly as it has done since Windows 2000 • Based on industry feedback, no use of Disk Self-Test or attribute comparison • Failure triggers user-mode code • Filter out duplicate failures • Log SMART READ LOG details to OS event log • Device error count from summary error log sector • Life timestamp from most recent error log entry • Trigger user-context interactive resolution • Customizable by Group Policy • Print instructions, walk user through backup